Wow, thanks for the lightning fast and enlightening response. This looks like what I was thinking about, but I have one more question.

Is it necessary to store the children in the parent, like what you do in the Parent package:

# save this child inside the parent object
    push @{ $self->{_children} }, $child;
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Or is it enough to pass the child a reference to the %opts?

And thanks!

s-t